Baseball fungos are fun-ctional!

Angel manager Ron Washington

I was lucky enough to grow up in the suburbs with a bunch of sports-loving friends where there were some houses had large and flat backyards. During baseball season we’d play backyard baseball, or at least our version of it since we often only had four or five players total. Because of that, we’d ‘self-hit’ and “represent’ the offense since everyone else played defense. Fungos was not the word we used. While we knew about fungos hit by coaches for fielding practice, we didn’t think about or use specific fungo bats, nor would we even know where to find them. But fungos enabled us to play baseball and we all became pretty good self-hitters.

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What was odd about our little game is that it was played in the backyard of a family who had a kid about our age who didn’t like or play baseball. But they had the best yard in the neighborhood for us kids to play ball after school and the kids parents never told us we could not play back there. There was a grape arbor in the house next door where my best friend lived and while playing outfield (there was not sufficient room for left, center, or right fielders), you might much on a few concord grapes while waiting for an argument about a ruling to be over. There were lots of arguments because that’s what kids do.

Personally, I was a better fungo hitter than I was a Little League hitter since that’s what I practiced every day whether I knew it or not. We all developed fungo hitting techniques that worked for us individually. I would hop and skip before throwing it up and hitting it to gain some momentum as I was a small kid. That worked well and at summer camp one year I won the fungo hitting contest beating much bigger kids who had zero fungo hitting technique.

The word fungo is great to begin with!

Fun and go combining for a word? As John Oliver might say, ‘that is EXCELLENT!’ Yet we don’t completely know when or where the first fungo bat was created and used. The fungo bat itself is long and light and different from a game bat. Without a pitcher firing a baseball at 90+ MPH, they rarely are broken and can last years and years.

From a company that sells fungo bats called JustBats.com”

The origin of the word “fungo” is unknown and argued upon as there are many possible options as to the origins of this unique word, but these three versions are the most popular predictions:

1. It is derived from the Scottish word fung, meaning to pitch, toss, or fling. This would make sense, as fungo bats are designed to do just that.

2. In 1937 David Shulman, writer for the American Speech, said, “My guess is that the word, which is baseball slang, may be explained through the elements of a compound word, fun and go.”

3. Fungo comes from an old game like baseball, where the players used to chant, “One go, two goes, fun goes.”

Fungo bats are designed to be swung for longer periods and have been around for a long time

If you have tried to hit fungos to fielders using a traditional wood or metal baseball bat, you will quickly realize how tiring it is! That’s why fungo bats weigh less (17–24 ounces) and they have a narrower diameter. Fungo bats are also longer (34–37 inches compared to a wood baseball bats at 32–34 inches) and offer a larger hitting surface. There are fungo bats designed to hit fly balls (36–37 inches long) and ground balls (34–35 inches).

Fungo bats have been around and in regular use since at least the 1890’s. Famed Cincinnati Reds manager Harry Wright was known to have used fungo bats for infield practice. Henry Chadwick’s “The Base Ball Player’s Book of Reference” first mentioned the term “fungo” in 1867, referring to a practice game called “fungoes”. You may have heard of [Henry Chadwick](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Chadwick_(writer)#:~:text=Henry%20Chadwick%20(October%205%2C%201824,guide%20sold%20to%20the%20public.), creator of the box score, as he is often referred to the “Father of Baseball” editing the first guide to baseball sold to the public. There are various references to fungos through the 1870s.

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Here’s the best thing in my view about fungo bats. They are easy to use! Anyone can pick one up, throw up a ball and swat it even if that takes a few tries. It feels like, BASEBALL! And there’s not a hurler 60 ft. 6 inches away trying to fire the pill past you! That’s fun!

About the Author: Mark Kolier along with his son Gordon co-hosts a baseball podcast called ‘Almost Cooperstown’. He also has written baseball-related articles that can be accessed on Medium.com and now Substack.com.